Dr. Manhattan’s Hand Observed In Space

By Akela Talamasca on April 14th, 2009

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite recently picked up a startling image in space: a star known as PSR B1509-58, scattering energy outward from itself, resembling a human hand outstretched.

Now, we all know that human beings have a habit of creating order out of chaos almost absent-mindedly. We have an inherent ability to see correspondences between events that’s unmatched by any other form of life. We typically use this talent to imbue even inanimate objects with a kind of sentience or awareness, like anthropomorphizing a simple pattern of tree moss into the likeness of a face.

So when something like this energy projection comes along, it’s a given that different people will read into it whatever they want it to represent. The religious among us will likely see the hand of God. The geek among us will see the hand of Dr. Manhattan, who we all know left the earth to wander the universe at the end of Watchmen.

Probably somewhere out there in the vast reaches of spacetime, some other sentient species is making yet another connection, being able to see this phenomenon from a completely different angle. Which begs the question: how many correspondences are we missing because we’re viewing things from a vantage just slightly skewed out of true? Maybe we’re missing out on seeing all sorts of crazy things, like gargantuan octopi, a colossal Mickey Mouse head, or the McDonald’s logo dwarfing some distant star. Perhaps we’re out of cosmic tune just enough to be unaware that the universe is trying to give us hopeful messages of unity and peace, writ large by the passing of comets through space dust, or the ionization of gases in the upper atmosphere.

Maybe something’s talking to us all the time and we just don’t realize it. Look around you, folks … make something from nothing and see if it gives you some inspiration. And remember what Anais Nin once said “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”